Lesson Structure:Horticultural Research II BHT241

There are 7 lessons:

1. Identifying Research Issues and Determining Research Priorities
   • Introduction: first, second, third steps
   • Finding research ideas
   • Brainstorming
   • Steps to brainstorming
   • Mind maps
   • How to mind map
   • Concept mapping
   • Determining research priorities
   • Beginning your research
   • Formulating a research topic
   • Is the reseach feasible
   • Formulating a hgypothesis
   • Terminology
2. Acquisition of Technical Information
   • Literature review
   • Research methods
   • Basic methods of collecting information: experimental, correlation, questionnaires, surveys, tests, document review
   • Naturalistic observation
   • Focus groups
   • Case studies
3. Specialised Research Techniques
   • Selecting a research method
   • Fishbone diagrams
   • Applications for cause and effect diagrams
   • Lateral thinking
   • Lateral thinking techniques
   • Pareto analysis
   • Observations
   • Root cause analysis
4. Research Planning and Designing
   • Project planning
   • Defining the problem, possible solutions and objectives
   • Problem tree analysis tool
   • SWOT analysis
   • Prioritise objectives and define activities
   • Allocate resources
   • Results and assessment
5. Statistics
   • Introduction
   • Data presentation
   • Measures of central tendancy
   • Distributions 
6. Conducting Research
   • Collecting and logging data
   • Developing a data base structure
   • Data transformations
   • Analyzing data
   • Managing data
   • Analytical procedure
7. Writing Reports
   • Reporting results
   • Report structure
   • Contents of a research report (example)
   • Pitfalls to avoid

Please Note:  Each lesson concludes in an assignment, submitted to your Tutor for marking and returned with relevant suggestions, comments, and, extra reading where appropriate.

Learning Goals: Horticultural Research II BHT241

• Determine areas where there is a valid need to research processes relevant to horticultural research in today’s social, economic, political and environmental context.
• Acquire and demonstrate skills in locating and reviewing scientific and technical information.
• Develop and explain alternative research and observational techniques for a particular Horticultural research study.
• To design a quality and focused research project addressing a social, technological, environmental and/or economic issues that impact on Horticulture today. The research component must allocate resources needed (time, financial and human resources).
• Demonstrate and explain basic statistical knowledge used for research with emphasis on your ability to present and monitor given data.
• Conduct a quality and focused research project addressing a social, technological, environmental and/or economic issue that impact on Horticulture today.
• Demonstrate skills in report writing

Your tutor for this course is:

   Susan Stephenson

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General

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